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SaaS: Missteps & Mastery

SaaS: Missteps & Mastery

By: Bluebird
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About this listen

What’s the secret to building a successful SaaS company?

Join host Machiel Kunst—an ex-operator in SaaS and recruitment expert with over a decade of leadership experience—as he uncovers the pivotal missteps and moments of mastery that define the journeys of SaaS founders and leaders.

Through candid conversations, Machiel explores the failures that taught the biggest lessons and the strategies that led to extraordinary success.

Curious to learn? Tune in.

© 2025 SaaS: Missteps & Mastery
Economics Leadership Management & Leadership
Episodes
  • Caroline Zand-Korteweg | Life as a Female Founder
    Sep 4 2025

    In this episode, Caroline, co-founder of Uncover, shares how a casual dinner between two burned-out lawyers sparked one of Europe’s most promising LegalTech startups. What followed was anything but smooth: an MVP built by the wrong people, a founding team with zero technical background, and a fundraising journey that included questions like, “How much money does your husband make?”

    But Caroline and her co-founder didn’t give up. Instead, they built a product lawyers actually use. She opens up about building trust in a slow-moving market, the lessons they learned from rebuilding their tech team, and the moment they ditched their homegrown models to go all-in on GPT.

    We also talk motherhood, bias, and how being underestimated sometimes becomes your greatest advantage.

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    41 mins
  • Matthijs Huiskamp | Mastering the Founder Mindset after a €8M Series A
    Aug 4 2025

    In this episode, Matthijs Huiskamp, Co-Founder and CEO of Altura, shares his unconventional path from a failed hardware startup (yes, it involved beer cooling) to raising a €8M Series A and building one of Europe’s most promising SaaS scale-ups. He opens up about the power of focus, why Altura delayed international expansion, and the internal chaos that comes from being “too fast” at hiring.

    We also dive into the personal side of leadership; navigating imposter syndrome, hiring people more senior than yourself, and reinventing your role every six months. With plenty of hard-won lessons on growing from freelancer to founder, Matthijs delivers a candid look at what it really takes to lead a 40+ person SaaS company through rapid growth.

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    40 mins
  • Lars Mangelsdorf | From SDR to successfully founding & exiting a SaaS business
    Feb 25 2025

    In this episode, Lars Mangelsdorf, Co-Founder and CCO of Yokoy, takes us on a journey from his early days as an SDR to building a multi-product SaaS powerhouse. He shares candid insights on scaling aggressively, navigating complex European markets, and the hard lessons learned from over-hiring and rapid expansion. With practical advice on mastering outbound sales and adapting to market nuances, Lars reveals how every misstep paved the way for Yokoy's eventual acquisition by TravelPerk.

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    41 mins
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